By Brian Pessaro

Imagine this scenario. It is January and a Metro bus is heading north on I-35West into Minneapolis during morning rush hour. Traffic starts to back up at the Crosstown as it always does, and within only a few minute the bus comes a standstill. Great. Now the driver is going to miss the next time point. If this keeps up the bus may be a full 20 minutes late arriving downtown. Passengers start to grumble and start whispering to one another. “Why doesn’t he just take the shoulder,?” they ask. “After all, Metro buses are allowed to use them during traffic jams.”

But in this case the driver is not willing to take the risk. With all the snow on the ground he has no way to tell where the shoulder ends, so he stays put. The passengers continue their grumbling as the bus indeed arrives downtown 20 minutes late. If only there were a way he could safely use that shoulder during lousy weather.

Now, imagine a different scenario. Heading north on the same corridor again traffic starts to back up. Only in this scenario the driver presses a button that activates the new driver assist system, making the snow no longer a concern as the driver can view the shoulder boundaries digitally projected on a head-up display.

He moves safely onto the shoulder and starts bypassing the congestion — much to the delight of the passengers onboard. Continuing down the road, the bus starts to drift  a little too far left, causing the digital boundary on the head-up display to flash red as a warning. At the same time the left side of the driver’s seat begins to vibrate as if driving over a rumble strip — another warning cue from the driver assist system. The driver makes a steering correction and keeps moving, arriving downtown on time and unstressed with a happy busload of passengers.

Welcome to the world of vehicle assist and automation (VAA), guidance technologies that provide partial or full control of a vehicle’s movements. In the transit industry, VAA can be used for guiding buses in a narrow lane or shoulder, precision docking at stations or collision avoidance.

As yet, VAA is not in widespread use. What little use is predominately by European operators. For example, in Rouen, France bus transit buses use an optical guidance system that relies on cameras that can read the road stripes and make steering corrections. In Eindhoven, Netherlands, a series of magnetic markers embedded in the road precisely guide the bus into the station. Until recently, only two agencies in the U.S. even attempted to use VAA in bus revenue service.

The Las Vegas MAX bus rapid transit was created with an optical guidance system, but it was quickly discontinued after it was discovered the cameras couldn’t read the stripes in the harsh desert environment. The other system, which was much more successful, was the Cleveland HealthLine bus rapid transit. They opted for a low-tech form of VAA. They use mechanical guide wheels mounted on each side of the front axle to guide the buses into the stations.

That being said, several locations in the U.S. are giving VAA another try and are experimenting with a variety of technologies.

MVTA

In Minneapolis, the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority has partnered with the ITS Institute at the University of Minnesota to create a GPS based driver assist system very much like the one described above.

In California and Oregon, Caltrans has partnered with the engineers at PATH at UC Berkeley to develop a magnetic based guidance system. They plan to use it in two places. AC Transit in the San Francisco Bay area will use it to guide a bus on an HOV lane across the San Mateo bridge and through a narrow toll plaza. Lane Transit District in Oregon will use it for precision docking on their EmX bus rapid transit system. Finally, the San Diego Association of Governments plans to start a new bus on shoulder service on I-805 between South Bay and University Towne Centre that will include buses equipped with optical guidance and adaptive cruise control.

We at the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute have been asked by FTA to evaluate what impacts these technologies have on bus revenue service. We’ll be looking at customer and bus operator satisfaction, efficiency and productivity, maintenance, and safety, as well as how the technology performed. Will these new demos of VAA succeed? Will they be worth the investment? Stayed tuned for the results!

Brian Pessaro is a senior research associate for the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute

By Jennifer Flynn

Without a doubt, image is important to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Sleek looking vehicles, rail-like stations, advanced technologies and a strong brand identity are just a few of the features that help communicate the message: This is not just a regular bus service. With BRT specifically designed to emulate the high quality service of rail-based transit, there is still much the industry must know about its capability to replicate the premium image of rail and how and why it attracts ridership.

NBRTI recently completed a study to examine the tangible and intangible factors that influence public perceptions of different transit modes.

Tangible service attributes – like travel cost, travel time, and service frequency – are concrete and pretty straightforward to measure, while intangible attributes, such as comfort, ride quality, and safety, are a bit fuzzier. They’re based more on opinion and, as such, are more difficult to measure and quantify.

We designed the NBRTI study around two market research exercises; first a series of focus groups followed by an attitudinal survey. We fielded the research in Los Angeles, CA due to the city’s range of different rapid transit modes, including BRT-Lite (Metro Rapid), Full-Service BRT (Orange Line), light rail (Gold Line, Blue Line) and heavy rail (Red Line).

Focus Groups

The focus groups revealed a large number of service attributes that affect user perceptions of different transit modes. Survey participants rated each transit mode from “very poor” to “very good,” both overall and according to the 14 core service attributes. We used the overall rating for each transit mode as a proxy for ridership attraction. These findings show that people do perceive alternative rapid transit modes differently. Furthermore, differences in perception appear to be independent of any particular mode or technology.

The survey data revealed significant differences in the overall ratings of the different modes, which we grouped accordingly into four statistically distinct tiers. Overall, ratings generally followed the relative level of investment required to provide each service.

To dig a little deeper we examined the actual level of investment of each mode, defined as capital cost per mile in 2005 dollars. The figure below compares each mode in terms of overall rating and actual level of investment, and also shows the four tiers.

This analysis showed a large disparity in investment level. Yet, aside from the two obvious extremes of the local bus and the Red Line, the ratings achieved by the remaining transit services didn’t simply follow respective levels of investment. For Tiers 2 and 3, both the Metro Rapid “BRT-Lite” and Orange Line “Full-Service” BRT outperform their investment costs, achieving a slightly higher rating than their more expensive light rail counterparts. Overall, these findings show that, in the perception of the public, BRT (even in its lower-investment forms) can compete with rail-based transit in return for lower capital cost investments.

We then took a look at the influence of the different tangible and intangible attributes on the overall ratings of each mode. It appears that modal perceptions are determined by a combination of tangible and intangible attributes, with reliability being the most important tangible factor and safety the most important intangible factor. Interestingly, ratings for the local bus were found to be more heavily influenced by the tangible attributes of travel time, service span and service frequency, while the rail modes were more heavily influenced by the intangibles of safety and comfort. Focus group transcripts suggest that urban context influences the attractiveness of a transit service by directly impacting perceptions of intangible service attributes such as safety. That urban context may in fact have a larger impact on overall perceptions than whether a service is rail- or bus-based.

Overall, findings show that Full-Service BRT can replicate both the functionality standards and image qualities normally associated with rail, and that even a lower-investment BRT-Lite service performs remarkably well in terms of overall rating achieved per investment dollar. Please follow this link for the full report with all the details: NBRTI Research.

Jennifer Flynn is a Senior Research Associate for National Bus Rapid Transit Institute.

By Victoria Perk

With any public investment people want to know what benefits they will get for the cost, that is their tax dollars, and rightly so. One could certainly argue the benefits from investments in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to a community as being reduced congestion, less stressful and less expensive commute options, improved air quality and better access to education and employment. But another benefit is the subject of ongoing research at the NBRTI: increased property values due to proximity to BRT systems.

Think of all you look for when deciding on a place to live. Not only are the property characteristics important, but so is its location in relation to employment, schools, shopping and parks. To what extent is location near BRT considered? Is the availability of BRT service a factor in an investment decision such as a home purchase? We set out to answer these questions.

What we found

We found that previous research in the United States on property value impacts of transit focused on rail transit. This previous work generally found results that are statistically significant, positive, and yet relatively small in magnitude.

Some research has been done in this area for BRT systems that operate outside the United States, but this research is among the first to study this issue for BRT systems operating in the U.S. Because many BRT systems in the U.S. may be too new to find evidence of capitalization into property values, we used data from Pittsburgh’s Martin Luther King, Jr. East Busway, one of the oldest operating BRT systems in the country.

The marginal value of being near rail transit is really to be expected considering the myriad of factors that comprise the total market value of a given property. This is not an easy subject to tackle but the question of whether BRT can have a positive impact on surrounding property values is very important and requires a scientific, statistical approach. Correlation does not imply causation.

BRT impact

Our hypothesis was that BRT stations have an impact on property value that is commensurate with rail transit projects considering the level and permanence of services and facilities. We want to learn the extent to which proximity to BRT is considered in the home-buying or investment decision.

Do people consider a BRT system to be as “permanent” as a rail transit (i.e., light rail) system?

To test this hypothesis, we used a hedonic regression model to isolate and estimate the impact of distance to a BRT station on the fair market value of single-family homes located near Pittsburgh’s Martin Luther King, Jr. East Busway. It was expected that, as the distance to a BRT station decreased, the property value would increase.

It was found that the relationship between the distance to a station and property value is inverse and decreasing as distance from a station increases, which matches our hypothesis. Similar to the research on rail, our results were statistically significant and relatively small in magnitude. Follow this link to read the full report for all the details: NBRTI Research.

Encouraging results

Using the model from Pittsburgh, we have some encouraging results that show BRT can have impact on property values similar to rail transit, including LRT.

Decreasing marginal effects were found. Moving from 101 to 100 feet from a station increases property value approximately $19.00, while moving from 1001 to 1000 feet increases property value approximately $2.75. Another way to interpret this result is to say that a property 1,000 feet away from a station is valued approximately $9,745 less than a property 100 feet away, all else constant (this figure is determined by summing the marginal effects for each foot of distance). The results shown in this report are only valid for the data used in Pittsburgh’s case. As more BRT systems continue operating in the United States for more years, this method should be applied to other cities and other types of properties to gain a better understanding of the general property value and land use impacts in proximity to BRT.

Of course, we can improve our model to provide more conclusive results, and we are working on that right now. We are refining our method, including other types of properties such as multi-family and commercial, and looking at other BRT systems, such as Boston’s Silver Line. I like to share a favorite quote from the statistician George Box with my economics students when we’re discussing the finer points of the Keynesian and Classical macroeconomic models:  “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

Without a doubt, our model of property value impacts will never be perfect, but it can surely be a very useful tool. We can use it­ along with qualitative studies and other anecdotal evidence in developing overall assessments of a BRT investment’s benefits to the community regarding land use, property values, and economic development.

One of the more interesting areas of research on Bus Rapid Transit that I’ve worked on relates to land use and the relationship between the two. At the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute (NBRTI), my colleague, Victoria Perk, and I have both spent time working on this area, yet we each focused on different aspects. Victoria has headed an effort that includes modeling to quantify the economic impact, specifically in Pittsburgh along the Busway, while I’ve investigated some of the local policies and practices that have the potential for impacting development along BRT corridors and the question of perceived permanence of the transit mode (which is often gives light rail the edge).

Since our results have been published as two separate reports we thought it best to “blog” it to you as such, and seeing as I’m the one writing this blog you can guess what part of the research you will be able to read about today.

Many of us in the industry have often heard about developmental impacts (think…$$$) resulting from the implementation of light rail systems. Given that BRT is somewhat similar to light rail in its ability to operate on its own dedicated right of way, provide fast service at competitive speeds, and offer high carrying capacities, we thought it only made sense to look at the different policies and practices that may impact developmental potential in cities where both light rail and BRT operate (or will be implemented) and if these practices include both modes. We took a close look at Los Angeles, Ottawa, Boston, New York, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

The different types of local policies and practices we looked into included local land use plans, zoning, and capital improvement programs; financial and non‐financial incentives (e.g., density bonuses, tax incentives, streamlined development application process, loan support etc.); the structure of tax revenues for local jurisdictions; and, experiences of the transit agency and other local institutions.

Some question whether the significant development along the Boston Silver Line has occurred because of the BRT or because the surrounding area was slated for redevelopment. This line of thinking may be missing a more important point…that the city included BRT in their policies and plans and labeled it as a rapid transit mode capable of supporting both development and the resulting increased demand for transit.

It was also found that parking mitigation measures may have a positive impact on development. In cities such as Boston, Ottawa and New York, measures have been implemented in an effort to increase transit ridership and decrease congestion. Although these policies may not have been implemented in a direct effort to encourage transit-oriented development, they have the potential to result in increased transit demand and greater density development around transit stations.

When evaluating policies that encourage economic development and whether or not they are equally applied to both BRT and LRT, we found the following:

• In Baltimore, the establishment of Maryland Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) zones supports rail development. Bus Rapid Transit has not been included in any incentive programs or policies.
• Along the Orange Line in Los Angeles, transit-oriented development has not been significant, yet a great deal of development has occurred at the North Hollywood station where both rail and BRT stations are located. There are many incentives available to developers, but public demand and developer appeal will determine which areas are developed in the future.
• In New York City, there are no specific incentives for BRT or LRT – future plans and development seem to favor mass transit in general. Environmental impacts may become a deciding factor of which system utilizes the possible benefits.
• There are no specific incentive programs or incentives for corridor‐based development in Pittsburgh, but the passage of the Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) Act laid the foundation for TODs to be implemented. The legislation has no specific qualifier that would exclude BRT or LRT.

Development along BRT corridors has often been encouraged through a variety of land use policies or practices that have been established and adopted by local governing agencies or by other contributing organizations. This means that a particular city’s approach to its transit culture has the ability to shape and determine whether or not development occurs and if it will be successful. These policies and the local climate may be as important of a factor as the issue of permanence of a transit system.

What do you think?

To read more about this report, please visit our website www.nbrti.org and click on the Research link. Feel free to browse all of the other resources and stay tuned for our next installment, Part II of Land Use.

Cheryl Thole is senior research associate of the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute, Tampa, FL.

When David Hubbard invited me and my colleagues at the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute (NBRTI) to blog for BUSRide.com, my first thought was, “Blogging? Me? Isn’t that for young hipsters or overly opinionated people with too much time on their hands?”

Fortunately, the younger members of my staff prevailed on me that blogs are an important part of the new media and the way information is shared nowadays. They’re right of course. I’ve always enjoyed reading transit related blogs like Streetsblog and Human Transit, and not just for the blogger’s commentary. Sometimes the comments left by the readers are the best part of the piece.

Everyone’s got an opinion as the saying goes. So I’m flattered that BUSRide has asked us to contribute ours. We plan to post bi-weekly and give you our opinions on the latest developments in the world of bus rapid transit (BRT). Whether you think our opinion is spot on, out to lunch, or somewhere in between, we hope you find our blog stimulating. And we want to hear what you think about BRT too.

A national program

The National Bus Rapid Transit Institute is housed at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL. We were founded in 2001 with funding from the Federal Transit Administration. Our charge is to create a national program for training, technical assistance, research, innovation and evaluation of existing and proposed BRT projects.

We just recently attended the Bus Rapid Transit World 2010 Conference in Boston. From the presentations we saw, there’s no denying that the developing world is still far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to high-end BRT. We still have a lot to learn here, but we also have much to share. These are exciting times for BRT. Even CNN has taken notice in a recent video of the Las Vegas ACE.

Bus Rapid Transit World 2010 covered a broad range of areas. One that was particularly interesting was about incorporating technologies like transit signal prioritization (TSP). How many of you have tried to suggest this for your area but hit a wall when trying to convince your city or county traffic engineer?

New York and Boston presses forward

One great sound bite I heard was: “Confirm whether it is a real barrier before you stop at that wall.” It was refreshing to hear how New York City and Boston pressed forward with their TSP projects despite initial skepticism from the traffic engineers. The bottom line is TSP has helped speed their buses along and the world didn’t come to an end.

One evening after the conference, we had a chance to take a tour of the Boston Silver Line BRT. The tunnel portion of the route from South Station to Boston’s World Trade Center is quite impressive with very frequent service (three-minute headways during rush hour), a smooth and quiet ride, stations that looked and felt like rail stations, off-board fare collection and a healthy number of riders. We also had the chance to ride the Silver Line above ground on the Washington Street corridor. Again, the service was frequent and the stations had a nice rail-like feel; although, above-ground fare collection occurs on board the vehicles.

While riding the Silver Line along the Washington Street corridor, we noticed significant evidence of economic development with multi-family residences, parks, retail establishments, restaurants and offices. Seeing this reminded me of another memorable nugget from the conference: “Quality public development, such as BRT, will bring quality private development.”

Just how much it will bring is something we at the NBRTI are researching right now. I’m sure it will be one of the topics we report to you later on. Overall, we had a great learning experience in Boston.

Look for our comments on BRT and visit us at www.nbrti.org. We’ll watch for your comments.

Dennis Hinebaugh is director of the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute, Tampa, FL.